When Kelvin Pulley decided to not prosecute a DUI charge against Reginald Moore earlier this month, he said it was because the evidence was insufficient to prove the case against the president of the Leflore County Board of Supervisors.
Pulley
Moore
Among the evidence, though, given to the county’s prosecuting attorney were a video/audio recording of the incident and the arresting officer’s report stating that Moore had failed an initial test of whether he was intoxicated, according to the Mississippi Department of Public Safety.
“This evidence was all presented to the prosecutor,” Mac May, chief counsel in the Department of Public Safety’s legal division, said in an email Thursday, a week after the misdemeanor charge was dismissed by Justice Court Judge Jim Campbell upon Pulley’s recommendation. In addition, on the day of the hearing, the arresting officer, Mississippi Highway Patrol Master Sgt. Johnny Delaney, was in the courtroom and, according to May, prepared to testify.
The arrest report, of which the Commonwealth obtained a copy from May, states that Delaney and another trooper were running a roadblock on Mississippi 430, east of Greenwood, on Nov. 21 when Moore approached at around 10:20 p.m. in a privately owned pickup truck.
“Upon initial contact with Moore an odor of alcohol was present,” the report completed by Delaney says.
Moore was given a preliminary breath test, for which he registered a blood alcohol content of .177, according to the report. That’s more than double the legal limit.
A preliminary breath test, or PBT, consists of a small hand-held device that law officers use to determine whether there is probable cause to make a DUI arrest. In Mississippi, the exact blood alcohol measurement on a PBT is not admissible in court because of questions about the test’s accuracy. A generalized statement that the test had yielded a positive result for alcohol, however, would be admissible, according to Sgt. Ronnie Shive, a spokesman for the Highway Patrol.
Pulley said Thursday he was unware of what the breath test had determined.
“The PBT test and the results thereof are inadmissible at trial, but no, I did not know the readings,” he said.
Delaney
Delaney wrote that he first transported Moore to the Leflore County Sheriff’s Department “for further testing” to be performed on an Intoxilyzer 8000, a more complex device that uses infrared spectroscopy to analyze the alcohol content of a breath sample. The machine, however, was not working there.
“I advised Moore of such and advised him that I would have to transport him to the Greenwood (Police Department) to administer him the Intoxilyzer 8000 test,” Delaney wrote on the arrest report. “Moore stated that he did not trust the system.”
Delaney wrote that he took Moore to the police station despite the supervisor’s “reluctance in going.” Once there, “Moore adamantly refused to take the test.”
Moore was charged with DUI refusal in addition to being ticketed for driving under the influence.
On Thursday, Pulley continued to defend his decision to drop the case.
“The evidence that was provided to me was insufficient to me to show and to prove DUI under Mississippi law,” Pulley said.
He also maintains that there was no conflict of interest in his handling the case.
In addition to serving as county prosecutor, Pulley is the attorney for the Greenwood Leflore Consolidated School Board, whose members include Moore’s wife, Dr. Kalanya Moore. She voted with the majority to renew Pulley’s contract for another year on Jan. 12, two days before her husband’s court case.
In addition, Pulley had previously represented Reginald Moore in a civil matter regarding the estate of Moore’s late father, Robert Moore, whom Reginald Moore succeeded on the Board of Supervisors following Robert Moore’s death in an automobile accident in 2018.
Pulley said he no longer has a role in the estate dealings, which were complicated by Robert Moore dying without a known will.
“I do not currently represent Mr. Moore. ... The purposes of which I was hired for from the family, I handled those matters in 2019 and probably early 2020,” Pulley said.
According to the case file, the last legal documents prepared by Pulley to have Reginald Moore and his sister, Lataunya Wallace, named co-administrators of the estate were filed in January 2020.
Soon after his DUI charge was dismissed, Reginald Moore said that he planned to file a formal complaint against Delaney. Moore contacted the Commonwealth Thursday after apparently learning that the newspaper was looking further into the matter, but he declined to speak on the record.
“I do not have a comment on any of this,” he said.
As of Friday, the Department of Public Safety had not responded to the Commonwealth’s request for a copy of the video/audio recording of the arrest that it claims to possess.
Even though Moore’s case was dismissed, he still will be unable to drive legally until April because of his refusal to be tested on the Intoxilyzer 8000. Under Mississippi’s Implied Consent Law, DUI refusal results in an automatic “administrative suspension” of the driver’s license for at least 90 days.
The suspension for Moore’s license began on Jan. 5, according to Shive.
•Contact Adam Bakst at 581-7233 or abakst@gwcommonwealth.com. On Twitter at @AdamBakst_GWCW.
The original version of this article incorrectly confused the first names of Robert and Reginald Moore when reporting the names of the children who asked to be made co-administrators of Robert Moore's estate.
DUI arrest report on Reginald Moore, Nov. 21, 2020
